A lot of times, battle royale type games are ‘pop in, do some shooting, get shot, win (hopefully)’, and that’s about it. It’s not uncommon for a lot of this style of game to see lore within the battlefield, but rather outside of it in the form of comics, short stories, animated cinematics, and the like. However, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds decided that this was something they wanted to work in. And work some story into the game. And thus for PUBG’s Season 4 coming up, they brought forth the introduction of something a little more story heavy about their map Erangel:

About a month ago, the idea that PUBG would be getting into more storytelling and lore building for their game came around when Glen Shofield formed the new PUBG Corp company Striking Distance. During his transition, Shofield had expressed the excitement behind making PUBG more than just a battle royale game. And it’s possible this is the first sign of the plans to execute that.

The trailer itself begins the story of a man reliving his experiences as a child watching his home of Erangel being blown up around him. What caused the attack? We still don’t know. What we do know is that this man has made it his motivation to survive in the sudden wasteland of his home, being the only survivor. But not being the last.

This is where the game of PlayerUnkown’s Battleground comes in. The Mystery Man is shown to have a single chess piece of the Pawn through his life, a possible symbol of his family or something important to him as he has it through his life up to when he’s shown as an adult. And as an adult, he’s forcing others to fight, searching for another survivor of Erangel. These survivors are the players of PUBG.

It’s clear that there is now a story driven thought as to why the players are showing up in the battlefields, being forced to fight with a man behind the wall of screens watching it all go down. And from what Shofield had mentioned, it’s possible fans will be seeing much more to come about this mystery man and his twisted views on life and his odd motivation. And whatever that chess piece means (just kidding, it’s symbolic for everyone being a pawn, and he’s the one in charge).

Season 4 of PlayerUnkown’s Battleground will come to PC on July 24, and to console in late summer. Along with the upcoming implant of the story, there’s a whole patch list that can be found on the Steam page.